History of life

“ If we look into history we shall see that there has been a ruling power in the mental life of different peoples characteristic of every age, such as the mental devotion of the Romans to law and government, of the Greeks to art and philosophical disquisitions, of the people of the middle ages to mystical metaphysics and theological dogma, and so on. ”

“ Reveals progress through the ages.Lastly if we include in this study not only the history of men and of societies, but of the intellectual and moral life of man as a whole, not his descent but his ascent, history forms a subject of surpassing interest and energising hope. ”

“ Truly it has been said: 'To-day is the pupil of yesterday,' and also 'History is the great teacher of human nature by means of object-lessons drawn from the whole recorded life of human nature.' There is, then, no dead past. Every event is in a measure significant. ”

“ And the "weighty experience" and "composure of judgment" with which the study of the ancients no doubt does furnish "those who habitually practise it," may be obtained we believe by the study of the thoughts of all great men of all ages; by the study of life in any age, so that our scope be broad enough. ”

“ Names perhaps remain unaltered, but the inner life is different; modes of living, states of education, religious sentiments, great national events, foreign wars, or deep internal struggles—all leave such ineffaceable marks on the history of certain periods, that their influence can be traced through all the particulars of the time. ”

“ And many topics of quite primary interest to mankind, the first appearance and the growth of scientific knowledge for example, and its effects upon human life, the elaboration of the ideas of money and credit, or the story of the origins and spread and influence of Christianity, which must be treated fragmentarily or by elaborate digressions in any partial history, arise and flow completely and naturally in one general record of the world in which we live. ”

“ The history of a minute—why, it would give a bird's-eye view of every possible variety in human existence. Wonderful the many events that are happening together—life and death—joy and sorrow; the great and the mean; the common and the rare; good and evil; are all in the record of that brief segment of time. ”

“ It was as if the human soul had entered a new body, or as if the human body had received a new soul. Not least among the significant evidences of the new life were the rise of the study of history and the awakening of a keener and more practical interest in men and things the wide world over. ”

“ Inquiry into survival, and into the kind of experience through which we shall all certainly have to go in a few years, is therefore eminently sane, and may be vitally significant. It may colour all our actions, and give a vivid meaning both to human history and to personal experience. ”

“ The problem, therefore, which history has to solve, is to account for the renewed life, the marvellous progress, the intense vitality of this society, and the mighty influence which it has exerted on the destinies of mankind ”

“ Surely then Natural History acquires quite a new charm for us when we see that our task is to study among living forms, and among the remains of those that are gone, what has been the education and the development of all the different branches, so as to lead to the greatest amount of widespreading life upon the globe, each having its own duty to perform. ”

“ To them this question may be put: "Can you mention any form of life that merely 'is,' without doing anything?"
Taken separately and physically, we are animals, genus homo; taken socially and psychically, we are, in varying degree, human; and our real history lies in the development of this human-ness. ”

“ The successive generations of men are days in this man’s life. The discoveries and inventions which characterise the different epochs of the world’s history are his works. The creeds and doctrines, the opinions and principles of the successive ages, are his thoughts. The states of society at different times are his manners. ”

“ The fullest natural history of those forces that are operant in the hourly life of man, the most profound and subtle observation of the facts of this history, the most thoroughly scientific collection of them, make the beginning of this enterprise. ”

“ It is the conditions underlying history and rooted in the facts of human life itself which we must know, since from the beginning life and work have been practically synonymous, and in the nature of things remain so. ”

“ It seems very strange that one must turn back, and be transported to the very beginnings of history, in order to arrive at an understanding of humanity as it is at present. ”

“ History to us means a compilation of experiences, out of which the individual, as well as the race, will gain the right understanding how to shape and organize a mode of life best suited to bring out the finest and strongest qualities of the human race. ”

“ History hath but few pages—soon is told
Man's ordinary life,
Labour, and care, and strife,
Make up the constant chronicle of old. ”

“ History is the action and reaction of these two, — Nature and Thought; ”

“ Such would be the general theory of the two great currents in which human affairs may be said to have been successively drifting. But real history, even the history of all mankind, and much more that of any particular age or country, presents a picture far more complicated. ”

“ Physical necessities, pestilences, changes of climate, and the like outer things may deflect and distort the growth of human history, but its living root is thought.
All human history is fundamentally a history of ideas. ”

“ The earlier these habits are acquired and ingrained in the life history of the race, the more invariable and immutable will be their transmission; the habits of a few generations are easily modified or effaced by conflicting tendencies or conditions. The life history of every new individual, in its initial stages, is a (more or less complete [65] ) recapitulation of the life history of the race. ”

“ For this reason, also, history includes the first and most important body of school studies. But object lessons drawn from physical nature do not measurably qualify us for a better appreciation of individual and social life and action. The fundamental illustrative materials for history are drawn from another source, from the depth of the heart and inner experience of each person. ”

“ And the power of gradually losing all feelings of strangeness or astonishment, and finally being pleased at anything, is called the historical sense, or historical culture. ”

“ IV Nature is the shape in which the man of higher Cultures synthesizes and interprets the immediate impressions of his senses. History is that from which his imagination seeks comprehension of the living existence of the world in relation to his own life, which he thereby invests with a deeper reality. ”

“ Are not there little chapters in everybody's life, that seem to be nothing, and yet affect all the rest of the history? ”

“ He who knows about any people, or epoch, or special development of human nature, how it has come to be what it is and what it tends to, what causes have given it the character it has, and what its relation is to the general development of humanity, has attained to the philosophy of the history of that people, epoch, or development. ”

“ acts themselves alone are history, and these are not the exclusive property of either Hume, Gibbon, or Voltaire, Echard, Rapin, Plutarch, or Herodotus. Tell me the Acts, O historian, and leave me to reason upon them as I please; away with your reasoning and your rubbish! All that is not action is not worth reading. ”

“ When considering the past one is inclined to ask the question: “Does the history of mankind represent an unbroken line of progress, or, on the contrary, does it reflect a series of alternating periods of development and decay?” ”

“ No, I don’t mean the guess-work by which we live from day to day, and which is necessary to living: I mean the theories learned people propound to us about the past, about the meaning of human history. ”

“ All the great stages [16] through which, in the progress of civilization, the human race has successively passed, have been characterized by certain mental peculiarities or convictions, which have left their impress upon the religion, the philosophy, and the morals of the age. ”

“ History is the story of the way in which man has learned and is still learning, how to live: of how through long centuries he has sought to satisfy the practical needs of his body, the questioning of his mind, and the searching of his spirit. [1]
Mankind is still engaged upon the high adventure for this three-fold quest, and not yet has any one civilization succeeded in bringing into perfect accord the demands of the body, of the mind, and of {359} the spirit. ”

“ Let it suffice that in the light of these two facts, namely, that the mind is One, and that nature is its correlative, history is to be read and written.
Thus in all ways does the soul concentrate and reproduce its treasures for each pupil. He too shall pass through the whole cycle of experience. He shall collect into a focus the rays of nature. History no longer shall be a dull book. It shall walk incarnate in every just and wise man. ”

“ Under these two different forms, therefore doth Tradition reveal to us the primitive world, or in other words, these are the two grand conditions of humanity which fill the records of primitive history. ”

“ Human history is in essence a history of ideas, and these tremendous experiences of the war constitute a crowning epoch. ”

“ There is, I speak humbly, in common with Natural Science, in the study of living History, a gradual approximation to a consciousness that we are growing into a perception of the workings of the Almighty ruler of the world. ”

“ It is the instrument by which the results of the great experiment of human action on this theatre of being are collected and transmitted from age to age. Speaking through the records of history, the generations that have gone warn and guide the generations that follow. History is the Past, teaching Philosophy to the Present, for the Future. ”

“ History, indeed, is the record of the actions of individual men, and these men, like ourselves, had arms, legs and stomachs, and suffered the workings of the same fears and passions that we suffer. To derive any practical or spiritual benefit from the study of history, we must understand, as far as possible, by analogy from our own experience, how the events of which we read came about: we must see them as personal events, originated by the actions, and influencing the lives of human beings like ourselves. ”

“ Thus, whether we look at the dignity of the subject matter, or at the nature of the mental exercise which it requires, or at the nature of the field over which the pursuit ranges, History, the knowledge of the adventures, the development, the changeful career, the varied growths, the ambitions, aspirations, and, if you like, the approximating destinies of mankind, claims a place second to none in the roll of Sciences. ”

“ The mental and social development of mankind, the history of ideas and of institutions, received fresh and unexpected illumination. It began to be possible to sketch a very different outline of human origins and early history from that which had hitherto remained almost unquestioned. ”

“ History, which, like charity, best begins at home, but, like charity, should not end there, will ramify into anthropology, archaeology, political history, and geography, with the history of the growth of the human mind and of its products in the shape of philosophy, science, and art. ”

“ Faithful to our own, we here place ourselves at the historical point of view. Convinced that ideas have a history, and are most clearly and surely defined by their very evolution, we shall confine ourselves to following and describing that evolution. ”

“ For other things besides our knowledge grow—animals and plants, and the stars even. They, too, have a history, and it may be that their history, being also an affair in time, is not unlike in character to our own growth in knowledge. ”

“ How men lived from day to day, what their occupations were, their comforts and discomforts, their ideas, sentiments, and modes of intercourse, their state as regards art, letters, invention, religious enlightenment,—these are points on which history, as at present studied and written, undertakes to shed light. ”